Ken Ham, Richard Dawkins, and God

This is a good one at the blog of Ken Ham (ol’ Hambo), the Australian entrepreneur who has become the ayatollah of Appalachia. He’s famed for his creationist ministry, Answers in Genesis (AIG) and for the mind-boggling Creation Museum.

Can the idea of a Creator God be easily dismissed in just five steps? Well, atheist and anti-theist Richard Dawkins certainly thinks so!

Wow — Dawkins is not only an atheist, he’s also an anti-theist! Hambo says:

He recently appeared on a Norwegian-Swedish television show called Skavlan where he quickly dismissed the idea of God by ticking off on his fingers five arguments for God. Dawkins starts by equating God with fairies, and then says “the onus is not upon an atheist to say why there is not something, the onus is on a theist to say why there is.”

That’s a fair description of the burden of proof. He who makes an assertion has the burden of coming forward with evidence to support it. Hambo brushes it aside by saying:

Well, Dr. Richard Dawkins, the onus will actually be on each person on judgment day when he stands before God. And no excuses will be enough when we stand before Him. In the end, every person will bow before Christ and acknowledge Him as Lord. You can either do so voluntarily now or by compulsion later.

Whammo — Hambo tells Dawkins what he can do with his burden of proof! It won’t do him any good when he’s writhing in agony in the Lake of Fire, and Hambo is looking down on him from a fluffy cloud, laughing. Let’s read on:

Dawkins then says that “there simply are no reasons for the existence of a God.” But, of course, this doesn’t mean there actually aren’t any reasons for God’s existence. It simply shows his anti-God bias. He then mentions a few of the common arguments used to demonstrate that there is a God.

This is the fun part:

Dawkins begins with the argument from design. Now, Scripture is clear that everyone is without excuse for not believing in God because His creation clearly shows that He exists. But Dawkins dismisses the powerful argument from design in nature simply by saying that we should expect design because that’s what Darwinian natural selection does, “it makes them look as though they’re designed.”

Here’s how Hambo handles that one:

But what he never explains is how natural selection — a process that only works by decreasing or re-shuffling existing genetic information — is supposed to add the massive amounts of new information that are required to get the complexity we see today from a simple single-celled organism over millions of years. How do you get from simple pond scum to highly complex people without adding massive amounts of new genetic information? You can’t!

Dawkins next dismisses personal testimony by saying that people hallucinate or are fooled with relative ease.

Yes, they are. What’s Hambo’s response to that? He tells us:

Now, subjective personal experience does need to be weighed carefully, but what I would like to ask Dawkins is the same question Bill Nye was asked during our 2014 debate: where did consciousness (which is needed for our experiences) come from? Nye was at a loss to explain this “great mystery” as he called it and Dawkins likely would be too. Of course, God’s Word tells us exactly where consciousness (and everything else!) came from — God Himself. And, furthermore, in a godless world, how do you even know what truth really is when you have no objective standard for determining truth? Who is to say who is right and who is wrong?

Don’t mess with ol’ Hambo! Moving along:

Next is the argument of the first cause. This argument, in a nutshell, states that everything must have a cause, including the universe. Now, Dawkins dismisses this argument by saying that if God is the first cause, then where did God come from?

That’s the traditional response — and a good one — to an ancient argument. But Hambo is ready for it:

Frankly, it’s a silly response. God is outside of space and time — in fact, He created these things. He didn’t have a beginning and He will have no end. … If He needed to be created, He wouldn’t be God. But God doesn’t need a Creator; He is self-existent.

Hambo is making a fool of Dawkins! One can only drool in admiration. Here’s the next one:

Dawkins then explains that Darwin shows how everything got here without the need for God.

Hambo is ready for that:

But Darwin was simply wrong because everything we see in observational science confirms the history of the universe from God’s Word, not Darwin’s ideas — kinds reproduce according to their kinds; we don’t see new genetic information being added to produce brand-new features; life only comes from other life, never from non-life. Life did not originate by itself; it was created by our all-wise Creator.

Lastly, Dawkins addresses the so-called Pascal’s wager, which says that it’s better to believe in God, live a godly life, and be wrong when you die than to reject God and die and go to hell. He says that this is a “silly argument” and that there is no way of knowing if you’ve bet on the right god or not.

You don’t think that will stop Hambo, do you? He’s the worlds holiest man, and he knows infinitely more than Dawkins. He says:

But I submit that only the God of the Bible makes sense of this world. God alone has left us a coherent Scripture that does not contradict itself and is historically and scientifically accurate in all it says.

Having crushed all of Dawkins’ arguments, Hambo concludes with this:

My heart breaks for people like Dawkins who are utterly lost and who, unless they repent and believe in Christ, will face an eternity separated from God in hell. All of their seemingly clever arguments against God will amount to nothing when they stand before His judgment throne.

So there you are, dear reader. Dawkins knows better than to debate with a formidable intellect like Hambo. And now you do too.

“But I submit that only the God of the Bible makes sense of this world. God alone has left us a coherent Scripture that does not contradict itself and is historically and scientifically accurate in all it says.”

In other words:

“Christianity is the only true religion because it is the one I believe in.”

Well, Dr. Richard Dawkins, the onus will actually be on each person on judgment day when he stands before God. [Christian myth]

The Weighing of the Heart Ceremony [Egyptian myth]

The ancient Egyptians believed that, when they died, they would be judged on their behavior during their lifetime before they could be granted a place in the Afterlife. This judgement ceremony was called “Weighing of the Heart” and was recorded in Chapter 125 of the funerary text known as the “Book of the Dead”.

The ceremony was believed to have taken place before Osiris, the chief god of the dead and Afterlife, and a tribunal of 43 deities. Standing before the tribunal the deceased was asked to name each of the divine judges and swear that he or she had not committed any offences, ranging from raising the voice to stealing. This was the “negative confession”. If found innocent, the deceased was declared “true of voice” and allowed to proceed into the Afterlife.

The proceedings were recorded by Thoth, the scribe of the gods, and the deity of wisdom, often depicted as a human with an ibis head, writing on a scroll of papyrus.

The symbolic ritual that accompanied this ritual was the weighing of the heart of the deceased on a pair of enormous scales. It was weighed against the principle of truth and justice ( known as maat ) represented by a feather, the symbol of the goddess of truth, order and justice, Maat. If the heart balanced against the feather then the deceased would be granted a place in the Fields of Hetep and Iaru. If it was heavy with the weight of wrongdoings, the balance would sink and the heart would be grabbed and devoured by a terrifying beast that sat ready and waiting by the scales. This beast was Ammit, “the gobbler”, a composite animal with the head of a crocodile, the front legs and body of lion or leopard, and the back legs of a hippopotamus.
…
If the deceased was found to have done wrong and the heart weighed down the scales, he or she was not though to enter a place of torment like hell, but to cease to exist at all. … However, for those who could afford to include Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead in their tombs, it was almost guaranteed that they would pass successfully into the Afterlife. This is because the Egyptians believed in the magical qualities of the actual writings and illustrations in funerary texts. By depicting the heart balancing in the scales against the feather of Maat they ensured that would be the favorable outcome. The entire ceremony was, after all, symbolic.

There are times, y’know, when you think even Hambo himself must be aware of the fact that he’s talking complete and utter boll . . . ball . . . balderdash, and this is one of them. He doesn’t even seem to be trying with the arguments he’s putting forward here. They’d embarrass the average intelligent five-year-old.

I wonder if, for his blog posts, he’s got some kind of software like the one that produces fake Deepak Chopra deepities? If so, it would explain a lot.

> “In the end, every person will bow before
> Christ and acknowledge Him as Lord. You can
> either do so voluntarily now or by compulsion
> later.”
——————-
If Hamster et al. have to make threats of torture and pain and suffering, then that speaks volumes about the inherent persuasiveness of their ideas. “God is love”, hmm? Sounds like “religion of peace”.

God alone has left us a coherent Scripture that does not contradict itself and is historically and scientifically accurate in all it says.
Does this mean that Ham is holding God to a human standard? That he would not accept any scripture which did not agree with his concepts of consistency, history and science? If Scripture did not tell him that evolution is wrong and heliocentrism is right then … what?

One: Burden of proof. Ham simply refuses to acknowledge the concept, because God. Because damnation. Because hellfire. ‘Nuff said. The man is babbling.

Two: Argument from apparent design. Ham asserts design because God, thus completing the perfect circle. Design is what God does, Ham believes in God, therefore design is what Ham sees; and of course, Ham can’t be wrong. Then he tries for a bafflegab: Information can’t increase without conscious purpose. Nonsense. It can. It does. Demonstrated. Proven. It’s a flat falsehood to say otherwise. Ham is appealing only to the ignorance of his preferred audience.

Three: Personal testimony. Ham concedes that it’s unreliable, which is game set and match to Dawkins. But having conceded the essential point, Ham drags in a complete irrelevance: Where does consciousness come from?, he asks.

The answer is simple and obvious: the human brain. The human brain is a physical object. It is by far the most complex physical object we know of. How exactly it produces consciousness – whatever that word means – is not completely and rigorously known, and may never be known. What is known is that consciousness depends on the chemical and physical operation of the brain. Alter that operation and you alter consciousness. Prevent it and you prevent consciousness. It must follow that consciousness is an artefact of the brain.

Four. Argument from first cause. Where did God come from? Dawkins is pointing out an obvious inconsistency in the first cause argument. If God exists without cause, then the supposed necessity for a cause for all things is trashed. If there are causeless things, the argument from the premise that all things require cause is automatically refuted.

Five: Darwin removed the need for a creator of the separate species, because he demonstrated that unintelligent natural cause was a sufficient explanation for the origin of species. Ham’s response is a series of untruths and non-sequiturs. Living things “reproduce after their own kind,” he says. This is a lie by omission. Living things reproduce with variation, and the variations are naturally selected by environment. But environments vary in place and over time, so the variants are differentially selected. Hence they must diverge. It’s as simple as that; but that’s too complex for Ham.

“We don’t see new genetic information being added…” says Ham. This doesn’t even rise to the level of lie by omission. It’s a flat, straightforward lie direct. We see new genetic information being added all the time, and sometimes it produces new features.

“Life only comes from life, never from non-life”. This is to assert that life always existed, and is irrelevant to the question of its cause. It is in fact to contradict what Ken Ham says is the word of God. The waters and the earth brought forth living things, and man himself was made of clay, says Genesis. That is, life came from non-living things. But Ham is like all fundamentalists, very selective in his use of Scripture.

“All things were created by God”. Simple assertion. Assertions made without evidence are dismissed without evidence.

Six: Pascal’s wager. The odds deteriorate drastically – to one in thousands – if a particular God is specified. Better not to believe in any, on the far stronger possibility that none of them exist.

But Ham says that only his god is intelligible and coherent. Rubbish. Many gods, or dual gods, make far better sense of the randomness of the Universe, after all. They dispose of the problem of theodicy, and of the existence of natural evil. But of course the Talmud is completely coherent… wait, what’s that? Ken’s not talking about the Talmud? Oh, well, then, the well-known internal consistency of the Qu’ran is an excellent argument for… he’s not talking about that, either. Well, of course the Book of Mormon is completely self-consistent… not that one either, eh?

And if the God of Ham’s bible is consistent about anything, it’s inconsistency. Ham himself acknowledges that. This is a god whose fundamental transactions consist of a series of insane contradictions: he loves the world, but has already destroyed it once, and will do it again. He is our Father, and he loves us, but he’s going to send most of us to eternal torment. He is one, and he is three. He is man, and he is god. He is only good, except that he does evil things. His justice is perfect, except when he can be talked out of it because it’s manifestly crazy. On and on it goes. If there’s anything to this picture, it’s inconsistency and incoherence – downright insanity in places.

And yes, if such a monster exists and rules, then reasoned arguments will avail nothing. However, the Spartan response applies: “If.”

Ol’ Hambo doesn’t realize that “if no excuse is good enough” there is no onus either ….. He nicely shows that he only writes for the religious brain dead.
Not that Ol’ Hambo will make it according to his own belief, given the many times he without repenting violates the 9th Commandment. Like here:

” a process that only works by decreasing or re-shuffling”
That’s false testimony.

Wikipedia describes the show as Norwegian-Swedish.
From Wikipedia, “Skavlan is produced by Monkberry for Norwegian NRK and Swedish SVT. The show has an audience market share of 50% in Norway and 40% in Sweden with 2.5 – 3 million viewers per show. The show also airs in Finland and has a large Internet following.”
The Wikipedia page hasn’t been updated in a while, as the show is still on the air though nothing is listed past 2013.

St.Peter asks: Do you Ken understand that all mankind was put on earth to make decisions and be judged by choices they make?

Ken replies: We’ll of course.

St.Peter asks: You also understand that by lying to those that trust you, and by working to force our Father on others, you have removed their ability to make honest decisions and have only done damage to our Father’s plan. This was spelled out clearly quite a while back.

Ken: Gulp.

St.Peter: Yup. Pulls lever.

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